Monday, September 12, 2016

Wooster, Arkansas – growing

Wooster is in Faulkner County, not far from Conway, the county seat. Wooster’s 1960 population was 161. The 2010 census showed 860 population. Estimated population in 2015 was 999. Right. Since that figure is an estimate, why don’t we just round it off to 1,000? OK. We did.

The 2000 census showed Wooster as 97.3% white. About 9% of the population is below the Federal poverty line.

http://www.city-data.com/city/Wooster-Arkansas.html says the town’s population is 100% rural. When I was growing up, people lived either in town or in the country. If you lived in town, you weren’t rural. But, then, we weren’t (and still are not) the ones making official government definitions.

The site gives man/woman numbers as 467/504. That’s a decent ratio. You always want more women than men in your population.

People have lived in the area of Wooster for some time.

“Land grants were given to Frederick Campbell, Alexander Ferguson, John Lewis, and John Wiser in 1820 for the section of land where Wooster would be developed. Evidently, they farmed the land without developing a community, since the first recorded structure in the area was a store built by N. E. Adams around the middle of the nineteenth century. Adams also maintained a sawmill and a cotton gin. Adams sold his store to J. P. Wooster in 1881. The community was named for Wooster, who is described in local histories as ‘acting postmaster.’”